DR. EVA ALTERMAN BLAY ONE OF 1000 WOMEN CHOSEN
WORLDWIDE AS PART OF THE 2005 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE PROJECT

The project 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 defined as its objective
the nominating of 1000 women to represent collectively the millions of
women engaged daily in working for a better future. Without regard for
their own safety, they are active on behalf of the community's well-being.
They call for reconciliation, demand justice, and rebuild what has been
destroyed. They transform conflicts. They fight against poverty and for
human rights. They create alternative sources of income, and they strive
for access to land and clean water. They educate and heal. They reintegrate
HIV patients. They find solutions to a great many forms of violence and
they condemn the genital mutilation of girls.

Among the 52 Brazilian women included in the 1000 women who were chosen
worldwide is Dr. Eva Alterman Blay. Her ideology is best summed up:"Peace
means freedom, being treated equally and not being controlled by anyone
or anything."

Dr. Eva Alterman Blay (1937) is one of the first intellectuals to bring
the gender issues into university. Because of this, in the 1960s and 1970s
she encountered not only the Brazilian military regime's censorship, but
also the prejudice of other academics who believed that gender was a "minor
issue." She successfully defended the rights of women, and in 1985
founded NEMGE - The Center for the Study of Women and Social Relations
of Gender in the University of Săo Paulo; she is currently the scientific
director. She was also active in creating specific public policy related
to women's rights, and defended equal pay for women. She was a senator
in the Brazilian federal government, and also headed the State of Săo
Paulo Council on the status of Women, where she helped to implement a
program of preschool daycare and created a special unit to protect women's
rights in the police force. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Remember
the Women Institute.

A DEDICATION IN POCKING AND SHABBAT IN PASSAU
–
VE-DAY FOR THE DP WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN BY ANNA ROSMUS

Following the liberation of the labor camp at Schlupfing and the Kirchham
concentration camp near Pocking in Northeastern Bavaria by General Patton's
Third Army, on May 2nd 1945, the few Jewish survivors set up their own
community. Soon, there were over
8,000 of them. Many of the infants died shortly after their birth. Solomon
B. reported that the midwife pushed a dirty needle into the babies' fontanelles,
a small and extremely sensitive spot on their skulls. Others died due
to a lack of folic acids, the consequence of their parents' chronic malnourishment
in the concentration camps. Soon, fifty-two newborns and three adults
had passed away.

When the fence around their cemetery was ripped out in
1948, the Jewish community filed suit on the grounds of desecration, but the
senior state attorney refused to investigate. By February 14, 1949, all DPs
had to leave. The graves were not taken into custody of the state
administration, since the Free State of Bavaria claimed that they did not
belong to the category of graves of "victims of war and the regime of
violence," which the state is obliged to maintain. In the fifties the
communal administration sold the cemetery to a farmer who owned land
adjacent to it. Since that time, not only grass has been allowed to grow
over the bodies but also corn and rapeseed.

Since November 9, 1985, I have referred again and again
to these graves. I published relevant documents in my books Wintergreen-
Suppressed Murders, and Pocking. Morley Safer from the CBS-TV
program 60 Minutes considered the whole situation so evil that he
came over and did two segments. Canada's Prime Time News and dozens
of other TV stations reported about perverted bias, but nobody was willing
to restore the sacred places.

On May 2, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the
liberation of the Kirchham concentration camp, Rabbi Paul Silton from
Albany, New York and I laid blue and white flowers in the shape of a star of
David. The ribbon read "Remember the Children." In cooperation with some of
the survivors and DP children, we decided to erect a Star of David memorial.
Ten more years would pass, however, before that plan materialized. The
American Jewish Committee assisted us to raise the necessary funds. While I
created a sketch with obvious symbolism, Faye Sholitan in Cleveland, Ohio
started a letter campaign. Anny and Georg Rosmus, a retired teacher and a
principal in Passau, continuously monitored the progress of the work. Stein
Schwate, a local firm that specializes in headstones for graveyards, agreed
to build a Star of David. Subdued grey granite from the Bavarian Forest
shapes the star's outlining; blood-colored, meandering veins run across its
heart, embracing the solid cube, as if holding an urn—the kind the Nazi
regime used to send out to the families of those "deceased."

For the 60th anniversary of VE-day, in 2005, Holocaust survivors, US
veterans, and others joined me to return to Pocking and Passau. Pocking's
Mayor Josef Jakob agreed to clear the wild brush surrounding the memorial
site, and to repair the staircase and the
handrail. In addition, he offered some volunteers to guide the visitors.
Students of Passau's School for Foreign Languages translated all remarks for
the memorial dedication, so that both audiences, locals and their visitors
from the past, could follow. A
flute ensemble from the Wilhelm Diess Secondary School in Pocking played
Jewish melodies.

On Yom Ha Shoah, I accompanied former DP-children and
veterans of General Patton's 65th and 71st division. In 1945, they had
liberated the camp and guarded its inmates until they were safe. Now, they
brought their spouses, children and grandchildren to see whether the dead
are still surrounded by communal silence. For the first time ever, the
Catholic church chorus from St. Ulrich sang the Jewish Partisan Hymn, Zog
nit keynmol. As we dedicated the new monument in pouring rain, side by
side with the former children stood once again US veterans.

Yehudith Mazor was lighting yellow commemorative
yahrzeit candles, and Lower Bavaria's district Rabbi Shlomo Appel sang the
El Moleh Rahmim. Miriam Griver commemorated her father, Yehuda Lipot
Meisels, who built both cemeteries and buried the children; Naaman Mazor and
Yair Griver recalled their grandfather. All remarks, commemorating those who
suffered and cared, reflected an indomitable will to build bridges, here,
there, and everywhere.

As a toddler, Passau-born Bea Grace helped to shape the
first star of David over those graves, with long stemmed white roses her
grandmother bought. Now a legal specialist from the Center of the Judge
Advocate General, she returned in US military fatigues to introduce the
survivor and obstetrician Frederick Orenstein. The new granite star was
surrounded by a group of knowledgeable friends and active allies, including
Shelly Shapiro, Director of the Holocaust Survivors & Friends Education
Center in Albany, NY, and Human Rights Commissioner Susan Pentlin from
Missouri. Passau-born Gina Roitman read one of her poems. Afterwards, the
Orthodox Rabbi Shlomo Appel said Kaddish in the synagogue, while local
non-Jews and the liberal US Air Force Rabbi Donald Levy presented a Sabbath
service and meal at Passau's legendary Grand City Hall. Film clips from 60
years ago showed Russian and American officers celebrating VE-day in the
woods of Passau. At the end of the evening, Hungarian survivor Lewis Kest
recalled his work for UNRRA and IRO in the Passau region.

A constant crossing of bridges between different
parties and individuals made the whole day flow smoothly; be that between
locals and foreigners, between clergy and non-believers, over eighty
year-old survivors and three-year old children in the chorus, Jews and
non-Jews mingling on all levels. The concept of inclusion and a systematic
effort to keep everyone comfortable paid off nicely for all. As a result,
the dead from back then will no longer be wrapped in the much dreaded
silence. They are embraced by the living.

Judy
Cohen, a Holocaust survivor, went to Hanover in April 2005 to attend
the commemorative ceremonies for the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.
She reports: “It was my first trip to Germany since I left
it 60 years ago. I had qualms, I didn't know how I would react.
For sure the German government treated us better than 60 years ago.
I was impressed with the number of young Germans I met, who are working
on the new Documentation Centre. It is presently being built for both
the concentration camp and for the Belsen DP camp.”

Judy recounted a “curious experience” in one of
Hanover's Historische Museums, where she explored a new temporary exhibit
there on her own. “Briefly, the Germans have not yet made up their minds if
they were occupied or liberated in April-May 1945,” she said. “But the
tendency is, as expressed by the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony in his
keynote speech: 'We the German people were also victims of Nazism and we
needed outside forces to liberate us. We are grateful.' " Judy correctly
describes this as “falsifying history” and adds that “soon, soon, in a few
more years nobody will be able to discern who were the victims and who were
the victimizers.”

Judy was also recently in Hungary, where she was born,
and made the acquaintance of Dr. Katalin Pécsi, the Director of Education in
the newly minted Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Centre of Budapest.
The Centre is one year old. She reports that Dr. Pécsi with Dr. Andrea Petö
have created a Jewish feminist web site called "Esztertáska", which means
Esther's Bag (or purse). While most of it is in the Hungarian language,
there are a good number of articles in English also. One of its many
missions is to publish women's Holocaust stories that have never been told
before. The URL is: http://www.nextwave.hu/esztertaska/

DR. KARIN DOERR LECTURES IN CHINA ON WOMEN AND THE
HOLOCAUST IN APRIL AND AUGUST 2005

From 10-17 April 2005, Dr. Gary Evans and Dr. Karin
Doerr (a member of the Advisory Board of Remember the Women Institute) gave
formal auditorium lectures and informal workshops on Canadian film,
literature, and Women’s Studies at Hainan University. They were also two of
the five judges at the university’s annual final competition of the
English-speaking contest.

The following week, the Communication University of
China at Beijing invited them for similar presentations and other
activities. At both universities, they were asked to present their current
research. In Dr. Doerr's case, this is Women and the Holocaust.

The Women’s University of Beijing also welcomed Dr.
Doerr to a morning session on Canadian Women’s Studies and the most current
feminist research, including her own.

Upon their return, they were invited again, this time
by the Communication University of China at Beijing, to a forum jointly
organized in the city of Nanjing, for the 60th anniversary of the end of
World War II. Dr. Doerr's contribution is “Postwar Perspectives on Nazi
Terror: Women’s Responses in Film, Language and Art.”

This presentation suggests new approaches of collective and individual attempts at not
forgetting World War II, a history steeped in discrimination and murder. It
hopes to answer questions of how best to address and teach this past, how to
preserve the memory of its victims, and still move forward towards a global
humanism.

Women’s responses to the 20th-century’s
fascist atrocities demonstrate a vision based on analytical inquiry and
compassion. This paper shows how North American and European women address
Germany’s Nazi legacy in various media. It focuses on two films that involve
woman as heroine (The Nasty Girl, 1990, uncovering Fascist history)
and woman as filmmaker (Zyklon Portrait, 2003, exploring the science
of killing). These films expose World War II history from the perspectives
of a child of the perpetrator nation and a grandchild child of victims.

The second section deals with the language of atrocity,
again from various female viewpoints. One is the recorded language of
National Socialism as a contemporary tool for scholarship (Nazi
Deutsch/Nazi German: An English Lexicon of the Language of the Third Reich,
2002). This section also explains the creation of a victims’ language
as a result of concentration camp incarceration (trans. from the Polish,
“Words from Hell: The Camp Language of the Detainees of Auschwitz,
1998”). The third example demonstrates how genocide
and its language memories can become integrated into art as we consider the
American artwork “Word Shot” (2004). These works reveal how language affects
history and individual lives.

The conclusion deals with contemporary commemoration
sixty years after the end of World War II. It shows some ways that preserve
the memory of forgotten victims, such as a former graveyard of women and
children now a monument (2005). Perhaps such activity foreshadows hope and
will serve as a beacon to educate future generations.